A Radical Idea to a Malignant Problem

Recently I have taken some much needed time away from the platform in order to recharge the batteries and also reflect on our progression as a community.

I still browse the pages of steemit each day, usually coming across those people who I follow. I'll check in on some tags that I am interested in and also stop by to visit my friends at the #steemengine. However, my activity levels are down and my involvement is on the decline. I love this platform or at least the idea behind it, but it seems that we are headed down a dangerous road and without substantial time and attention put into remedying the situation, we are in danger of of ruining a great thing. I keep seeing positive posts from @steemitblog, but I haven't seen anything from that account or @ned addressing the major issues facing this platform

The Problem

There is so much garbage on this platform that we need to sift through in order to find quality content. On top of that a lot of the garbage posts are being heavily rewarded and the quality content is going unnoticed. In addition, voting bots and their creators are siphoning up liquid steem and SBD at an alarming rate with the allure that they are helping users get noticed. On top of this, the Steemit community seems more divided than ever with a large portion of the users just interested in their own well being. We are trending towards a dystopian society in which there is jealousy and malevolence shown towards others because of the disparity being created. You might think I am being very pessimistic but I feel our overall direction is headed towards an unsustainable future.

The three major problems I want to address in this post are:

• Frequency of posts and reward pool abuse
• Self voting and Community Support Index
• Bid bots and the Trending page

1. The Unrelenting Posters

I get it, really, I understand. The enticement of being rewarded with each new post is something that plays on our economic strings. It's a simple equation for most users:

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More posts = More rewards

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For some users, this equation works. If you have 100,000 SP in your account or have drawn the attention of a lustful whale then this is simple math. You can up vote yourself or have your beluga friend reward you as such. For regular users who have under 10,000 SP this equation does not work out. creating 5, 6, 7, 10+ posts a day does nothing but clog up news feeds and add to the spam count. Instead of posting 10+ posts a day that take maybe a few minutes each to produce, why not create 2-3 posts that are well thought out and more interesting to read. With that other time you've just saved from not spamming so often, go comment and curate other peoples work. They will appreciate it and you might even get a future upvote from a new friend.

For example, we all know the omnipresent crypto technical analysis guru wreaking havoc on the reward pool, but there are many other users doing the same thing on a smaller scale. I apologize for singling this user out, but he was the first one I came across on my newsfeed. @offgridlife never stops posting. in the 10 months he has been on the platform he has posted over 12,600 times or an average of over 42 times per day. If these were mostly comments on other users work that would be acceptable, but most are just new posts from him. Here is an example of what I am talking about:

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Five posts within 2 hours, cmon, take a break, go get a coffee and stop clogging the platform with nonsense. I am sorry for using @offgridlife as an example because there are tons of other users doing the same thing, but for F*&k sakes man, take a break and go comment and curate other peoples work.

This is just one of many users adding to the problem and they are not entirely to blame. They are merely symptoms of a broken system in which these self centered actions go unchecked.

Proposed Solution

Right now there are now consequences for constantly posting, the idea I have come up with is similar to our voting power system; every time you post, your potential rewards go down. As a hypothetical example, each subsequent post over 2, written within 24 hours subtracts a certain percentage from your potential rewards.

If we use 25% as an example, your first two posts you can earn 100% of the rewards, (exactly what we have now), your third post of the day however, you can only earn 75% of the potential rewards, your fourth post 50% and so on, so that after 5 posts in a 24 time frame, you are not able to claim any of the reward pool. I am 99.9% positive this would dramatically cut down on the number of posts.

The equation would look something like the x = 1- (n(.25)) where x is your potential reward percentage and n is the number of posts made above 2. Once n reaches 4 the equation goes to 0 and no more potential rewards can be earned for 24 hours.

2. Self Votes and CSI(Community Support Index)

Self votes are just something that are ingrained in the system. I have no problem with people giving themselves up votes on all their posts and even the occasional comments, you are doing yourself a disservice by not giving yourself an upvote. Where the problem arises is when a person only votes for themselves or a large majority of their votes go right back into their own wallet. @steemchiller has created an awesome sight Steemworld which gives you all the data on every interaction that takes place. One feature that I love is the Community support Index. This is a great indicator of what percentage of a users votes are going back to him or herself. Here is a screen shot of my CSI,

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you can see that I am currently at under 4% self vote, which to be honest is quite low, even for me. Usually I am around 7-10% but I just haven't been posting much lately. Anything under 20% is acceptable in my opinion, if you are giving yourself 2 out of every 10 votes you make on the platform, cool. But once you start going above 20%, 30% or higher, it is clear you are not interested in the well being of the platform, you are only interested in lining your own pockets.

The Solution

As your self vote percentage continues to rise, your visibility on the platform should inversely decline. It's simple, the more you reward yourself, the less visible your posts become. The idea behind this is that when you only look after yourself, the community doesn't benefit, so as your self absorbed actions pile up, your visibility in the community goes down.

3. Bid Bots and the Trending Page

This is where it gets interesting. The idea behind bots is to get posts noticed. Perhaps they are undervalued or perhaps a bid bot purchase will give you a positive ROI. I have gone back and forth during my tenure here, but I strongly believe our platform would be much better WITHOUT bid bots, and this is why. Bid bots are increasing at an alarming rate, with more and more votes coming from paid users rather than people reading content and willfully upvoting it. This needs to stop. Essentially it has become a battle of bid bot timing to maximize rewards and hit the trending pages. The same users pay for votes over and over to get their content noticed all at the expense of people who don't /can't purchase these bids. What makes matters worse is that a lot of these bids are for shit posts, absolute garbage. The bot owners don't care, as long as they keep raking in the liquid steem/SBD, it's not their problem. Our platform would be much better if all bots were banned!!

On top of this, and maybe a more concerning issue is the amount of Steem/SBD and SP these bots are accumulating. The curation rewards that some of these bots are piling up is unbelievable. Take for example @booster.

@booster has earned over 26,000SP just from curation!!!! This number is going to keep growing exponentially as its voting weight increases. Users just keep shipping over their Steem/SBD for a quick upvote, while the only winner in this equation is the bot and it's creators. These bots are terrible for the growth of the platform. Take for example @jerrybanfield. He has some social media power and he has done some great things and some not so great things here on the platform. I have talked with Jerry several times, trying to see things from his perspective, I have called him out and I have backed him up. But seeing that his account has turned into a bidding bot, I am disappointed in his choice and removed him from my witness voting. Not that he would care about a small vote from me, but its disheartening to see the bot mentality take over.

The Solution

Once again this deals with visibility. The more you pay for votes, the less visible your post should be. What good is a post that has 250 upvotes, is worth over $100 and has only been seen by 35 people. That goes against everything this platform should stand for.

Bots should be capped at $5 max. This does not erase the problem but it helps to lower the amount of abuse possible. Secondly, the trending page should be about the number of views a post gets, not the $$$ it's worth. There are tons of great articles out there that are trying to compete with the bidders. This skewed playing field needs to be leveled. A $5 cap on bid bots and only manual curation to be eligible for the trending page would go a long way in helping even the playing field.

There are lots of obstacles that we face and will face going forward, but we need to address them as a community before they spread uncontrollably. Take even this post as an example. I am very tempted to send over some SBD to several bots to try and get it in front of as many eyes as possible, where as several months ago I would have been much less tempted because I had a chance of getting it on the trending page without purchasing votes. Amazing how much even my mindset has changed.

I would love to know your opinion on this matter. Am I just being a whiny bitch who's jealous of others success here or am I seeing things clearly? Do you have other ideas to help solve some of the issues here? I would love to have some dialogue and not have it fall on deaf ears.